"I come from county Galway originally. I was based at Northumberland and flew the brand new yellow Wessex craft out in Aden - you didn't see those again for lots of years!

Then I came back to work in Operations at RAF Valley in the 1970s and served as a winch man on the search and rescue team. We got all sorts. Dr Ieuan Jones was the casualty officer at the C&A in those days and we'd always work with him closely because he was the one that would sort out the people we rescued.

One rescue that stands out was when one chap was up at the training camp for search and rescue in Snowdonia and was being examined by one of the qualified mountain rescue instructors. In the training, they were looking for a casualty, but this character fell right off the side of the mountain and finished up jammed in between some boulders. He had slight abrasions on his head, his shoulder was jammed sideways into the rock and he had a broken femur.

The pilot was Flight Lieutenant Derick Nequest, who went on to be Wing Commander, in charge of RAF Valley search and rescue services.

So I said to the navigator when we'd finished running around getting all the stuff up the hill; 'Go and get Dr Ieuan Jones - he'll be the bloke that will be operating on him', because I knew from my own experience of the potential consequences of a broken femur.

He flew to the hospital and returned within 15 minutes with Dr Ieuan, who was carrying a pillowcase full of goodies - because it was a chopper job he'd just slung everything he needed into a pillow case and brought it with him.

Back on the mountain, I told one of the instructors (some guy in a bobble hat!) to put a life jacket under the rock which was pressing on the injured chap's shoulder and blow it up gently - but for goodness sake not to pull the handle because that would have sent him into orbit! The casualty did start screaming but then said his shoulder was a lot better and could sit up, waiting for the crowds to arrive.

Eventually the doctor arrived and asked if anyone had any morphine. The training instructor in the bobble hat pulled out a very ancient vile of morphine from his pack, complete with syringe - it was military issue and had probably been scrubbing about his bag for years. Ieuan applied the morphine, set up a drip and I finished up by cutting a long rope from the aircraft and tying it to the rear of my harness. Then I secured a cable from the rock, and paid it out until I could tie up myself and the stretcher, holding the drip bottle in the other hand.

The chopper got in as close as it could without the danger of hitting the blades against the mountainside and the people on the rock started paying the rope out to the vertical line and they were able to winch me and the casualty straight up without pulling the aircraft down or sideways into the danger.

Ieuan had some great ideas. I did a first aid course with him and it was great, but trying to persuade the military to change things was a problem. The biggest problem of all was communications.

When I started at Accrington, I picked up a beach guard who was in trouble. After a lot of difficulties we managed to rescue him but there was no resuscitation equipment in the ambulance. After that, it became standard to have resuscitation equipment in ambulances.

I've always thought too that all the organisations involved in a rescue - the coast guard, the police, the life boat - didn't communicate very well. That's why I think they should all come under one agency, one complete national rescue service, which would include pot-hole rescuers, cavers, mountain rescue, the police, the army, air force, lifeboat. All of these have their own rescue coordination centres but I think they should all come together so everyone can know what's going on in a rescue situation.

I enjoyed my job in search and rescue. We had a lot of fun but the thing was, when we actually got down to it, we were professionals. It was dangerous work, but it was just another job. Life's like that, you just get on with it."